


Live Me Golden, Tell Me Dark

by djarum99



Category: Alice in Wonderland (2010)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-18
Updated: 2010-04-18
Packaged: 2017-10-09 00:35:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/81112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/djarum99/pseuds/djarum99
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A follow-up/standalone to Wonders Wild and New. The title is from Alice, a song by Tom Waits, written for the stage play and from the album of the same name. Mr. Carroll's little story has had a long run. This is Alice discovering the truth of Underland, the Hatter, of madness and of love.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Live Me Golden, Tell Me Dark

**Author's Note:**

> A follow-up/standalone to Wonders Wild and New. The title is from Alice, a song by Tom Waits, written for the stage play and from the album of the same name. Mr. Carroll's little story has had a long run. This is Alice discovering the truth of Underland, the Hatter, of madness and of love.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
**Current location:** |  [sunday](http://maps.google.com/maps?q=sunday)  
---|---  
**Current mood:** |   
mellow  
**Current music:** | leonard cohen - anthem  
**Entry tags:** |   
[alice](http://djarum99.livejournal.com/tag/alice), [alice in wonderland 2010](http://djarum99.livejournal.com/tag/alice%20in%20wonderland%202010), [fanfic](http://djarum99.livejournal.com/tag/fanfic), [tarrant](http://djarum99.livejournal.com/tag/tarrant)  
  
  
_ **Fic: Live Me Golden, Tell Me Dark** _

Title: _Live Me Golden, Tell Me Dark_  
Author: [](http://djarum99.livejournal.com/profile)[**djarum99**](http://djarum99.livejournal.com/)  
Rating: R  
Pairing: Alice/Hatter  
Disclaimer: Disney owns many of the things that I love, including the inhabitants of Underland; I make no profit

 

Tarrant Hightopp has a history of which he does not speak. Alice knows the story of all that died that Day, knows its scent of ash and brimstone, its black scar upon the Wood. The Hatter's scars are white and cold, river-slick beneath her fingers, and she wonders just how deep they run, what ocean drinks his pain. She remembers fangs and claws and triumph, the colors of terror and blood, but Horunvendush sleeps in darkness, and Tarrant Hightopp dreams its ghosts.

Underland was, undoubtedly, the place where she belonged, but it wasn't the place she Believed in childhood's beginning - or even at childhood's ending, on that Frabjous afternoon.

_There's a potion that can make you shrink, a cake that can make you grow. Animals can talk, cats can disappear, there is a place called Underland, and I once slayed the Jabberwock to find my way back home..._

Home. Here. A land of impossible things with sharp edges, wistful madmen, and riddles she'd yet to solve.

That first night, Alice had come to his bed without questions, knowing too little to find their form, knowing only that words could give no answers. He had undressed her, so slowly - she'd feared him lost to buttons and lace, had tried to guide his hands.

"No. Let me."

She had, her gown whispering secrets as it slipped to the floor. He replied, a muddled curse, traced sweet patterns across flesh, against bone, as though he meant to clothe her in the thin night air, the unseen art of his hands. She had undressed him, quickly, innocence rendering her clumsy - she'd feared his loss to unheard voices, to some locked door within his heart. Bereft of silk and fine-work stitching, his skin had stolen moonlight, limning muscles tensed beneath as though gathering to run.

"Alice, my Alice, you're brand-new, I'll break you, I can't..."

"You can, and you know I won't break. This, this is what makes us whole - one. Isn't it?"

"This, this, this...makes us whole, makes us shatter, hearts like porcelain, hearts like glass..."

His eyes had flickered gold, and she'd leaned in to cool their fire, kissed him, succeeded only in fanning the blaze. He had drawn her with him, into the flames, had summoned her body's wisdom with the wonder of his hands, and he had been so careful, so gentle until he couldn't be, moving fierce and hot inside her. She had watched him come undone, cradled his face and banished the pain, had known the moment he returned to her in a brilliant wash of green.

Every evening after, he taught her more of this new sorcery. McTwisp had fashioned a lock for their door, unbidden, and every morning they awoke to their white bed-sheet's transformation, tangled in silky prism colors ranging from rose to deepest purple. Tarrant dismissed the miracle, saying it was simply a quirk of the Hightopp bloodline, "a much more interesting habit than white, but best not tell the Queen."

On this particular morning, the sheets are periwinkle blue. The Hatter has risen early; she lies abed and listens to the pleasant chink of china, the hum of his voice chastising a needle whose eye refuses entrance to any shade of red. Alice rises and steps to the doorway, studies him surrounded at the table by the clutter of his trade. She studies his hands, remembers the rough magic of their midnight explorations - she _is_ innocent still, enough to blush - and wonders where he had learned, and how.

He's known other women before her, has lain with them, perhaps shared mornings just like this one; the thought gives her pause, but none of jealousy's brittle affliction. But, it's a part of him she doesn't know, a part of his past that may live, she thinks, in the shadows that haunt his sleep.

She asks for the story, and he freezes, refuses, his eyes gone dangerous and dark. Alice remembers riding his shoulder, the day that she'd first returned, and feels almost as small. _It's all about you, you know,_ but this isn't, there is nothing here for her to slay, only his memories, only his madness. No sword awaits, and no armor can protect her.

The silence stretches, the first they've known, and then he finds his balance, offers a grave crooked smile.

"Alice - being inimitably Alice, and yourself - I know you must ask, but today is not the day I answer. Not the day. No. Go ask Mirana. The Queen always has a charming response, though not often to the question posed - have you noticed? But useful, nonetheless. Ask your questions, and then come back to bed."

"We're not _in_ bed."

"No, but it's the best of all places to be, and we should return there posthaste. After you've taken Curiosity out for a stroll, and I have finished this hat."

"It is not just curiosity that leads to me to ask, Tarrant. You suffer still, from nightmares, the voices - how can Mirana speak to that?"

"She can't, of course. Which is why you must ask her, for _her_ story. This is Underland, Alice, and you know the way."

Tarrant turns back to his table, and Alice sighs - relief, tempered blunt by frustration - bathes, dresses, and sets off to visit the Queen.

They take tea in the garden, a smoky smooth blend, downwind from eavesdropping flowers. Mirana tells her of her father, a diamond-hard man who scoffed at beauty, shunned literature and laughter, who drove his Queen to some icebound place where his daughters could not follow.

"My sister sought his adoration, made his way in all things her own. I took the white path, Iracibeth the red. She killed him, you know, traded death for his indifference. You know the rest, my dear, as you are part of the story. You were our Champion."

"And now?"

"Now you have returned to us, and all is as it should be."

"But so much is still broken. Tarrant..."

"Some things require the very best glue, some things simply can't be mended, and sometimes it is the world that's mad, and the madman merely wise."

Mirana's gaze is compassionate, although just slightly left of center. She stands in the hedgerow's dim shadows, and for the first time Alice notices that the White Queen's gown isn't truly white at all - in sunlight's absence, the gossamer threads span a rainbow, and more than a few glimmer red.

"Blindness, Alice, is the only true sin. This has been lovely, my dear, but now I really must see to the hedgehogs."

"Mirana, please - wait."

There is one last piece of the puzzle, the last answer to the royal riddle.

"How did you choose? Such a difference, between two sisters - how did you find your way?"

The White Queen raises an elegant eyebrow, sweeps up her skirts and drifts away. Her voice floats back over the drowsing sundial, bemused and a trifle chiding.

"My darling girl - you already know the answer to that."

By the light of late afternoon's sun, Alice makes her way back to the castle's cool marble, and finds the Hatter contemplating his latest creation. Iridescent blue, adorned with cobweb netting and sequins like starlight - she knows he has made it for her. He settles it on her head, eyes green and clear as glass, and slowly, deliberately, splays his hand across her heart.

"Her name was Aileana, and we were to be wed."

She takes him on linens that glisten like snow, glides above to watch him fall beneath her hair's bright curtain. When his body arcs upward, it is her name he calls, and she tumbles after, finds her haven in the same warm sea.

"You feel like summer, Alice, like heat and rain and hope."

He rolls them sideways, still joined, and brushes his lips against her throat. Alice knows that he is still mad, but the Hatter sees in every color and has chosen only one. Beyond the bay window, the stars dance a sad pavane, and his heartbeat drums a lover's question, the answer to her own.

Tarrant Hightopp has a history of which he does not speak. The Red Queen's bones lie mouldering in the Outland, mingled with those of her Knave, and the Oraculum gathers dust. Alice knows the future to be a patchwork they will weave, from joy and love and heartache, from days and nights unwritten. Underland sleeps easy, and Tarrant Hightopp dreams a child in blue with her father's jade-green eyes.

  
  
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